A Fine & Private Place

Peter S. Beagle

“One of literature’s most beautiful works about ghostly times and places . . . told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality.”
—New York Times Book Review

For nineteen years, Jonathan Rebeck has hidden from the world within the confines of a Bronx Cemetery, making an abandoned mausoleum his secret home. But when a talking raven arrives, Rebeck finds himself drawn into a mystery surrounding two ghostly lovers, as well the possibility of a better life for himself. Told with an elegiac wisdom and beauty, Peter S. Beagle’s first novel is a timeless work of fantasy imbued with immortal hope and wonder.

A Fine & Private Place

by Peter S. Beagle

ISBN: 9781892391469

Published: 2007 (Original publication 1960)

Available Format(s): Trade Paperback

Description

For nineteen years, Jonathan Rebeck has hidden from the world within the confines of the Bronx’s Yorkchester Cemetery, making an abandoned mausoleum his secret home. He speaks with the newly dead as they pass from life to wherever spirits finally go, providing them with comfort, an understanding ear, and even the occasional game of chess.

But Mr. Rebeck’s reclusive life is soon to be disrupted. An impossible love has blossomed between two ghosts at Yorkchester Cemetery, and Rebeck finds himself drawn to a living woman. Helped along by a cynical, talking raven and a mysterious security guard, these four souls must learn the true difference between life and death and make choices that really are forever.

Told with an elegiac wisdom, Peter S. Beagle’s first novel is a timeless work of fantasy, imbued with hope and wonder. This updated edition contains the author’s final revisions and stands as the definitive version of an enduring modern classic.

Praise for A Fine & Private Place

“One of literature’s most beautiful works about ghostly times and places . . . told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality.”
—New York Times Book Review

“A Fine & Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction

“Delightful!”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“I first read A Fine and Private Place in 1970. It was my first introduction to the work of Peter S. Beagle. I was 18 years old. That I can still recall the opening scene so clearly is an indication that this book was a unique experience for me as a reader. I immediately followed this book by reading The Last Unicorn. A Fine and Private Place is a contemporary ‘ghost’ story set in a cemetery, and The Last Unicorn is a lovely fantasy set in an alternate world. I recommend both of them without reservation.”
—Robin Hobb, author of Assassin’s Apprentice and Assassin’s Fate

“A sweet, sad, and smart novel about life, death and love . . . a book that has endured for a reason.”
—The Agony Column

“A wonderful work of literature . . . a gem of a novel.”
—BookLoons

“Over a cold beverage and a hot bowl of chili, Peter Beagle recently told me how he came to write A Fine & Private Place. He was just nineteen years old at the time, the length of time that Mr. Rebeck spent in that cemetery. He was working as a counselor at a boys’ summer camp. Once the campers were settled for the night there wasn’t much for the counselors to do. Those who had sweethearts at the girls’ camp across the lake would borrow canoes and paddle across to see them. Peter had no such luck, he told me, so he warmed up his rattly little portable typewriter, cracked open a ream of paper, and starting writing a book. We are all incredibly lucky that Peter had no girlfriend that summer.”
—Dick Lupoff, SF Site

“An amazing read. . . . If fantastically developed characters trapped between love and death appeal to you, this is a nearly perfect book.”
—Paperblog

About the Author

Peter Soyer Beagle is the internationally bestselling and much-beloved author of numerous classic fantasy novels and collections, including The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, The Line Between, Sleight of Hand, Summerlong, In Calabria, and most recently, The Overneath. He is the editor of The Secret History of Fantasy and the co-editor of The Urban Fantasy Anthology.

Beagle published his first novel, A Fine & Private Place, at nineteen, while still completing his degree in creative writing. Beagle’s follow-up, The Last Unicorn, is widely considered one of the great works of fantasy. It has been made into a feature-length animated film, a stage play, and a graphic novel. He has written widely for both stage and screen, including the screenplay adaptations for The Last Unicorn and the animated film of The Lord of the Rings and the well-known “Sarek” episode of Star Trek.

As one of the fantasy genre’s most-lauded authors, Beagle is the recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Locus awards as well as the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He has also been honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award and the Inkpot Award from the Comic-Con convention, given for major contributions to fantasy and science fiction. In 2018, he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Beagle lives in Richmond, California, where is working on too many projects to begin to name.

Praise for Peter S. Beagle

“One of my favorite writers.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time

“Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts’ reasons that reason does not know.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness

“Peter S. Beagle has both opulence of imagination and mastery of style.”
—New York Times Book Review

“The only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien.”
—Booklist

“Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers’ hearts.”
—Tad Williams, author of Tailchaser’s Song

“Peter Beagle deserves a seat at the table with the great masters of fantasy.“
—Christopher Moore, author of Lamb and The Serpent of Venice

“We all have something to learn—about writing, about humanity, about hope—from Peter Beagle.”
—Seanan McGuire author of Rosemary and Rue

“Peter S. Beagle is a master of the magical, but also of the little details of day to day existence that root his characters in the soil, sweat and everyday breezes of their worlds, and make the magical all the more magical when it touches them.”
—Kurt Busiek, author of Astro City and The Avengers

“[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet.”
—Saturday Review

“At his best, Peter S. Beagle outshines the moon, the sun, the stars, the entire galaxy.”
—Seattle Times

“Not only one of our greatest fantasists, but one of our greatest writers, a magic realist worthy of consideration with such writers as Marquez, Allende, and even Borges.”
—The American Culture

“The Last Unicorn is the best book I have ever read. You need to read it. If you’ve already read it, you need to read it again.”
—Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear

“Beagle’s unicorns have never been more bewitching, impossible, and genuine. I cherished every page.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and After Alice (on In Calabria)

“Peter Beagle’s novel Summerlong is a lovely, tantalizing read that moves through a finely-detailed, familiar world into a tale as old and as urgent as language.”
—Patricia A. McKillip, author of Dreams of Distant Shores and Kingfisher

The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door. Frantically he beat his wings to gain altitude, looking like a small black electric fan. An updraft caught him and threw him into the sky. He circled twice, to get his bearings, and began to fly north.

Below, the shopkeeper stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the diminishing cinder in the sky. Presently he shrugged and went back into his delicatessen. He was not without philosophy, this shopkeeper, and he knew that if a raven comes into your delicatessen and steals a whole baloney it is either an act of God or it isn’t, and in either case there isn’t very much you can do about it.

The raven flew lazily over New York, letting the early sun warm his feathers. A water truck waddled along Jerome Avenue, leaving the street dark and glittering behind it. A few taxicabs cruised around Fordham like well-fed sharks. Two couples came out of the subway and walked slowly, the girls leaning against the men. The raven flew on.

It had been a hot night, and the raven saw people waking on the roofs of the city. The gray rats that come out just before dawn were all back in their cellars because the cats were out, stepping along the curbs. The morning pigeons had scattered to the rooftops and window ledges when the cats came, which the raven thought was a pity. He could have done with a few less pigeons.

The usual early fog was over Yorkchester, and the raven dropped under it. Yorkchester had been built largely by an insurance company, and it looked like one pink brick building reflected in a hundred mirrors. The houses of Yorkchester were all fourteen stories tall, and they all had stucco sailors playing accordions over the front entrances. The rear entrances all had sailors playing mandolins. The sailors were all left-handed, and they had stucco pom-poms on their hats. There was a shopping center, and there were three movie theaters, and there was a small square park.

There was also a cemetery, and it was over this that the raven swooped. It was a very large cemetery, about half the size of Central Park, and thick with trees. It was laid out carefully, with winding streets named Fairview Avenue, and Central Avenue, and Oakland Avenue, and Larch Street, and Chestnut Street, and Elm Street. One street led to the Italian section of the cemetery, another to the German section, a third to the Polish, and so on, for the Yorkchester Cemetery was nonsectarian but nervous.

The raven had come in the back way, and so he flew down Central Avenue, holding the baloney in his claws. The stretch of more or less simple headstones gradually began to give way to Old Rugged Crosses; the crosses in turn gave way to angels, the angels to weeping angels, and these finally to mausoleums. They reared like icy watchdogs over the family plots and said, “Look! Something of importance has left the world,” to one another. They were aggressively Greek, with white marble pillars and domed roofs. They might not have looked Greek to a Greek, but they looked Greek to Yorkchester.

One mausoleum was set away from the others by a short path. It was an old building, not as big as some of the others, nor as white. Its pillars were cracked and chipped at their bases, and the glass was gone from one of the barred grates over the front door. But the two heavy door rings were held in the mouths of two lions, and if you looked through the window in front you could see the stained-glass angel on the back wall.

The front door itself was open, and on the steps there sat a small man in slippers. He waved at the raven as the bird swept down, and said, “Good morning, good morning,” as he landed in front of him. The raven dropped the baloney, and the small man reached forward eagerly and picked it up. “A whole baloney!” he said. “Thank you very much.”

The raven was puffing for breath a little and he looked at the small man rather bitterly. “Corn flakes weren’t good enough,” he said hoarsely. “Bernard Baruch eats corn flakes, but you have to have baloney.”

“Did you have trouble bringing it?” asked the small man, whose name was Jonathan Rebeck.

“Damn near ruptured myself.” The raven grunted.

“Birds don’t get ruptured,” said Mr. Rebeck a little uncertainly.

“Hell of an ornithologist you’d make.”

Mr. Rebeck began to eat the baloney. “Delicious,” he said presently. “Very tender. Won’t you have some?”

“Don’t mind,” said the raven. He accepted a piece of baloney from Mr. Rebeck’s fingers.

“Is it nice out?” Mr. Rebeck asked after a moment.

“Nice,” the raven said. “Blue sky, shining sun. The world stinks with summer.”

Mr. Rebeck smiled a little. “Don’t you like summer?”

The raven lifted his wings slightly. “Why should I? It’s all right.”

“I like summer,” Mr. Rebeck said. He took a bite of his baloney and said with his mouth full, “It’s the only season you can taste when you breathe.”

“Jesus,” the raven said. “Not so early in the morning. Incidentally, you better get rid of all those old paper bags. I can see them from outside.”

“I’ll drop them in the wastebasket in the men’s room,” Mr. Rebeck said.

“No you won’t. I’ll fly them out. People start wondering, you know. They see paper bags in a cemetery, they don’t think the Girl Scouts are having a picnic. Besides, you hang around there too much. They’re going to start remembering you.”

“I like it,” Mr. Rebeck said. “I’m very fond of that lavatory. I wash my clothes there.” He locked his hands around his knees. “You know, people say the world is run by materialists and machines. It isn’t, though. New York isn’t, anyway. A city that would put a men’s room in a cemetery is a city of poets.” He liked the phrase. “A city of poets,”

he said again.

“It’s for the children,” the raven said. “The mothers bring the kids to see the graves of their great-uncles. The mothers cry and put flowers on the grave. The kids gotta go. Sooner or later. So they put in a big can. What else could they do?”

Mr. Rebeck laughed. “You never change,” he said to the raven.

“How can I? You’ve changed, though. Nineteen years ago you’d have been sloppily thankful for a pretzel. Now you want me to bring you steaks. Give me another hunk of baloney.”

Mr. Rebeck gave him one. “I still think you could do it. A small steak doesn’t weigh so much.”

“It does,” said the raven, “when there’s a cop hanging on one end of it. I damn near didn’t get off the ground today. Besides, all the butchers on this last frontier of civilization know me now. I’m going to have to start raiding Washington Heights pretty soon. Another twenty years, if we live that long, I’ll have to ferry it across from Jersey.”

“You don’t have to bring me food, you know,” Mr. Rebeck said. He felt a little hurt, and oddly guilty. It was such a small raven, after all. “I can manage myself.”

“Balls,” said the raven. “You’d panic as soon as you got outside the gate. And the city’s changed a lot in nineteen years.”

“Pretty much?”

“Very damn much.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Rebeck. He put the rest of the baloney aside, wrapping it carefully. “Do you mind,” he said hesitantly, “bringing me food? I mean, is it inconvenient?” He felt silly asking, but he did want to know.

The raven stared at him out of eyes like frozen gold. “Once a year,” he said hoarsely. “Once a year you get worried. You start wondering how come the airborne Gristede’s. You ask yourself, What’s he getting out of it? You say, ‘Nothing for nothing. Nobody does anybody any favors.’ ”

The raven made a dive at a hurrying caterpillar and missed. He spoke slowly, without looking at Mr. Rebeck. “There are people,” he said, “who give, and there are people who take. There are people who create, people who destroy, and people who don’t do anything and drive the other two kinds crazy. It’s born in you, whether you give or take, and that’s the way you are. Ravens bring things to people. We’re like that. It’s our nature. We don’t like it. We’d much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we’re ravens and there you are. Ravens don’t feel right without somebody to bring things to, and when we do find somebody we realize what a silly business it was in the first place.” He made a sound between a chuckle and a cough. “Ravens are pretty neurotic birds. We’re closer to people than any other bird, and we’re bound to them all our lives, but we don’t have to like them. You think we brought Elijah food because we liked him? He was an old man with a dirty beard.”

He fell silent, scratching aimlessly in the dust with his beak. Mr. Rebeck said nothing. Presently he reached out a tentative hand to smooth the raven’s plumage.

“Don’t do that,” said the bird.

“I’m sorry.”

“It makes me nervous.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Rebeck said again. He stared out over the neat family plots with their mossy headstones. “I hope some more people come soon,” he said. “It gets lonesome in the summer.”